Degrees of hearing loss refers to the severity of the hearing loss that the individual experiences.
The levels of hearing loss are generally classified as mild, moderate, severe or profound. Hearing loss that borders between two categories is typically described as a combination of the two categories (for example, thresholds at 60 dB HL might be called moderate-to-severe). The exact cutoff points for each category vary slightly according to different publications and different audiologists, but they are roughly as follows:
The charts below depict examples of audiograms for different hearing loss levels. The red circles represent the right ear’s hearing and the blue X marks represent the left ear’s hearing.
Audiometric thresholds ranging from 25-40 dB HL constitutes a mild hearing loss.
Audiometric thresholds ranging from 40-60 dB HL constitutes a moderate hearing loss.
Audiometric thresholds ranging from 60-80 dB HL constitutes a severe hearing loss.
Audiometric thresholds ranging from about 80-90 dB HL constitutes a severe-to-profound hearing loss.
Audiometric thresholds greater than 90 dB HL constitutes a profound hearing loss.
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